Erskine, Neil DA (2020)

Erskine, Neil D. A. (2020) Folds, fields, and fauna: A Deleuzo-Guattarian approach to the socialising power of religious experiences in Ancient Near Eastern landscapes. PhD thesis. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/81588/ Copyright and moral rights for this work are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This work cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Enlighten: Theses https://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] Folds, fields, and fauna: A Deleuzo-Guattarian approach to the socialising power of religious experiences in Ancient Near Eastern Landscapes Neil D. A. Erskine MA (Hons) MPhil Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Humanities College of Arts University of Glasgow May 2020 2 Abstract Archaeological approaches to socialisation are underdeveloped. As interpretative models are most often borrowed from other disciplines, rather than developed with a material-focus at their centre, archaeologists are left without effective object- centred frameworks with which to examine how individuals interacted with and learnt about their world. This thesis addresses these issues with a new approach, drawing upon Giles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, who offer many analytical tools that can directly connect highly theoretical interpretations of ancient societies to archaeological data. By stressing how humans understand the world through their accumulated previous experiences, Deleuze and Guattari direct the archaeologist to consider how identifiable human interactions with objects and places informed their subsequent experiences, and therefore their developing perceptions of their surroundings. This approach is tested against three case studies, in the 3rd Millennium Jazira, 2nd Millennium Anatolia, and 1st Millennium Southern Levant, that stress the intersection of landscapes and religious practice, both of which are frequently highlighted as powerful agents of socialisation. The varying forms and resolutions available for these case studies allow for a comprehensive exploration of a Deleuzo-Guattarian framework’s effectiveness in reconstructing and understanding ancient experiences of the world, and new interpretations of how ancient individuals both shaped and were shaped by their experiences of religiously-loaded landscapes. 3 Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................ 2 List of Tables.................................................................................................................... 9 List of Figures ................................................................................................................ 10 Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... 13 Author’s Declaration .................................................................................................... 14 Chapter 1: The socialising power of landscape and religion ...................................... 1 1.1. Socialisation absent an approach ..................................................................... 1 1.2. Landscape and religion as socialisation mechanisms ....................................... 4 1.3. Research questions and case studies .................................................................. 6 Chapter 2: Surveys, systems, and texts ......................................................................... 8 2.1. ANE research paradigms ................................................................................... 11 2.1.1. The Southern Levant and biblical primacy ............................................... 11 2.1.2. Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and text recovery ............................................... 14 2.1.3 Archaeological ignorance ............................................................................ 16 2.2. Textual reconstructions of landscape, religion, and socialisation .................. 17 2.2.1. Landscape..................................................................................................... 17 2.2.2. Religion ......................................................................................................... 19 2.2.3. Socialisation ................................................................................................. 26 2.3. Archaeological reconstructions of landscape, religion, and socialisation ..... 28 2.3.1. Landscape..................................................................................................... 29 2.3.2. Religion ......................................................................................................... 34 4 2.3.3. Socialisation ................................................................................................. 40 2.4. Reconstructing ancient routes ........................................................................... 43 2.4.1. Later networks ............................................................................................. 43 2.4.2. Landscape morphology .............................................................................. 47 2.5. Building a new approach .................................................................................. 52 Chapter 3: Pursuing Experience .................................................................................. 54 3.1. Interpreting the religious ................................................................................... 57 3.1.1. Theoretical isolation .................................................................................... 58 3.1.2. Avoiding religion ........................................................................................ 59 3.1.3. Functional, contextual, and cognitive approaches to religion ................. 60 3.1.4 The everyday transcendental ...................................................................... 62 3.2. Landscape, place, and meaning ........................................................................ 65 3.3. Learning and reproducing social conditions ................................................... 67 3.3.2. The data-theory divide ............................................................................... 70 3.4. Experiencing place ............................................................................................. 72 3.5. Experiencing materials, animals, and memories ............................................. 76 3.5.1. Materiality and new materialism ............................................................... 78 3.5.2. Animals ........................................................................................................ 84 3.5.3. Memory ........................................................................................................ 93 3.5.4. Deleuzian debts ......................................................................................... 104 Chapter 4: Building a framework .............................................................................. 108 4.1. Folded arrangements ....................................................................................... 110 4.2. Plateaus in a rhizome ....................................................................................... 116 5 4.3. Applying the Deleuzo-Guattarian approach ................................................. 120 4.4. The worthiness of the endeavour and trusting the interpreter .................... 123 4.5. A new analytical toolbox ................................................................................. 125 Chapter 5: Embedding Ideas ...................................................................................... 126 5.1. Early Second Millennium Anatolia ................................................................. 127 5.2. Creatures, cult, and creating meaning ............................................................ 129 5.2.1. Folding animals in ritual ........................................................................... 131 5.2.2. Bulls, boars, birds ...................................................................................... 134 5.2.3. Learning religion and internalising cult .................................................. 138 5.3. Assyrian traders and cultic animals: Conditions of experience ................... 139 5.3.1. Folding animals on the road ..................................................................... 139 5.3.2. Human-Animal interactions ..................................................................... 141 5.4. New narratives on old roads ........................................................................... 146 Chapter 6: Maintaining Meaning .............................................................................. 148 6.1. The Late Iron Age Southern Levant................................................................ 150 6.1.1. Chronology ................................................................................................ 150 6.1.2. Political context .........................................................................................

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